Christmas recommendations: short story collections

Unless you get to hide in a monastery over the season, your opportunities to relax with a long historical novel or a weighty account of European history are probably going to be limited – that’s why a short story collection is the ideal Christmas reading. Twenty minutes alone in the kitchen between the spuds going in and the parsnips needing parboiling, or a half hour in the pub waiting for your workmates to arrive: any opportunity like that and a good short story will transport you far away from all the enforced joviality.

It’s been a great year for stories – you could do a lot worse than go online and browse the winners of our monthly competition at the Short Story Club. There have also been some wonderful collections from big names, many of whom are not necessarily associated with the form. Alice Munro is an expert, of course. Her new collection, Dear Life (Chatto & Windus, £18.99) is Munro at her brilliant best and includes some tantalisingly autobiographical pieces toward the end. But novelists such as Emma Donoghue, John MacGregor and Victoria Hislop, more often associated with bestselling novels, have also turned their hands to brevity. Donoghue’s crafted tales in Astray (Picador, £14.99) range four centuries. McGregor’s perfectly poised and incisive stories of domesticity are set in the dark, flat-land of the Fens in This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You (Bloomsbury, £14.99) whereas Hislop’s The Last Dance and Other Stories (Headline Review, £12.99) will provide a much-needed glimpse of Greek sun.

As ever, though, short story collections have proved brilliant vehicles for the announcement of new talent, and in a year when no less than half the Man Booker Prize shortlist came from small presses, publishers are alive to the idea that less commercial books often prove to be a long term investment. Bloomsbury boldly announced 2012 to be the year of the short story and brought out a series of debut collections including I Am An Executioner (£14.99) by Rajesh Parameswaran and Diving Belles (£14.99) by Lucy Wood, who featured in our short story special issue at the beginning of this year. Faber & Faber brought out, This Is How You Lose Her (£12.99) by Junot Diaz, and Drifting House (£12.99) by Krys Lee, who was also shortlisted for this year’s BBC International Short Story Prize. Heinneman published This Will Be Difficult To Explain by acclaimed Canadian newcomer Johanna Skibsrud. So many great novelists started with stories, from Ian McEwan and Anne Enright to Lorrie Moore and AL Kennedy. Keep your eyes open for all the new authors listed above in years to come. If you don’t fancy experimenting with newcomers, there are life-work collections available too: Alasdair Gray has published Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 (Canongate, £30.00) and Terry Pratchett A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction (Transworld, £20.00).

What unites all these diverse publications, from the debuts to the collected works, is their physical beauty. Much has been said about the fittingness of the short story for the digital age and a few choice downloads also make stories the perfect commuting companion – but there is something about holding a well-produced book that seems particularly apposite for this most delicate and poised of literary forms. If you’re buying someone a present then a short story collection is the literary equivalent of the box of chocolates, something to be lingered over before you make your choice, preferably while you’re hunkered down on the sofa – it couldn’t be more suited for this time of year.